The Booker T. Washington Era

The 1870s to the start of World War I, the period when African
American educator Booker T. Washington was gaining prominence, was also a
difficult time for African Americans. The vote proved elusive and civil
rights began to vanish through court action. Lynching, racial violence,
and slavery's twin children peonage and sharecropping arose as deadly
quagmires on the path to full citizenship. After Reconstruction ended in
1877, the federal government virtually turned a deaf ear to the voice of
the African American populace.

Yet in this era blacks were
educated in unprecedented numbers, hundreds received degrees from
institutions of higher learning, and a few, like W.E.B. DuBois and Carter
G. Woodson, went on for the doctorate. While only a small percentage of
the black population had been literate at the close of the Civil War, by
the turn of the twentieth century, the majority of all African Americans
were literate. The Library of Congress houses the papers of three
presidents of Tuskegee Institute: Booker T. Washington, Robert Russa
Moton, and Frederick Douglass Patterson, and other important manuscripts
and photographs relating to the establishment, operations, aspirations,
and success of historically black colleges and universities.

Also
at this time, African American artistic genius in music, painting,
sculpture, literature, and dance became more evident to white society at
large. Some of the artists of this period, including poet Paul Laurence
Dunbar and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, won international acclaim. This
section of the exhibit demonstrates the progress of blacks in the last
decades of the nineteenth century.

This period has been called
the "nadir" of black history because so many gains earned after the Civil
War seemed lost by the time of World War I, and because racial violence
and lynching reached an all time high. However, both the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National
Urban League (NUL) were founded by blacks and whites during this time. The
papers of both of these major civil rights organizations, which are among
the holdings in the Library's Manuscript Division, document the
unswerving efforts on the part of blacks and their white allies to insure
that the nation provide "freedom and justice to all."

Although this song was written in 1901, it refers to the U.S. Colored
Troops during the Civil War, and to the first African American to win the
Congressional Medal of Honor, Sergeant William Carney. During the
Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment's assault on Fort Wagner, he took the
American flag from the fatally wounded standard bearer and, although
himself wounded, bore it back to the camp. "I never let the dear old flag
touch the ground," he said.

In 1901, Bob Cole, James Weldon
Johnson, and J. Rosamond Johnson wrote this song commemorating Carney's
heroism. The Johnson brothers also wrote, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing:
National Hymn for the Colored People of America" (1900), a piece that
enjoyed immediate popularity and has been dubbed the "Negro National
Anthem."

After the Civil War, African American soldiers who wanted to continue in
military service were able to join one of four units, the 9th and 10th
Cavalries and the 24th and 25th Infantries. These units were generally
employed as peacekeepers in the western territories. They protected
settlers, safeguarded stagecoach and freight transportation, hunted down
outlaws, and participated in campaigns against Native Americans. During
the Spanish American War they served both in Cuba and the Philippines.

This photograph is of an unidentified African American soldier
stationed at Camp Lincoln.

Many black men pursued a military career after the Civil War. During the
next major conflict--the Spanish-American War--the 9th and 10th Negro
Cavalry, known since 1866 as the Buffalo Soldiers, distinguished
themselves in the charge of San Juan Hill in Cuba. Additionally, the 25th
Negro Infantry took part in the Battle of El Caney, capturing a Spanish
fort. Black troops were among the first sent to the war. They
participated in campaigns in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. This image
depicts the 24th Infantry, stationed at Fort Douglas, near Salt Lake City,
Utah, leaving for Tennessee.

The federal government disbanded most of the United States Colored Troops
after the Civil War although some continued to patrol in the West. Native
Americans called African American troops the "Buffalo Soldiers." After
the Compromise of 1877, when federal troops were withdrawn from the South,
only a few African American units remained, including the Ninth and Tenth
Cavalry units and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry. Many of
these troops were mobilized to fight in the Spanish-American War.

In this sermon African American theologian and intellectual Reverend
Alexander Crummell comments on the struggles of African Americans to
achieve full citizenship in the United States. He notes that although
some whites sought to keep African Americans ignorant, "intellectual
aspiration has characterized the race in all the lands of their
servitude." He notes that "for two hundred years there has been a
struggle for the alphabet; the primer; the newspaper; and the Bible."
Crummell, born free, had received a B.A. degree at Queen's College in
Cambridge, England, in 1853. W. E. B. DuBois wrote an essay lauding
Crummell's abilities in Souls of Black Folk (1903).

Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington managed to get a
primary education that allowed his probationary admittance to Hampton
Institute. There he proved such an exemplary student, teacher, and
speaker that the principal of Hampton recommended Washington to Alabamans
who were trying to establish a school for African Americans in their
state.

Washington and his students built the school, named Tuskegee
Institute after its location, from the ground up. As a result of his work
as an educator and public speaker, Washington became influential in
business and politics. His vast collection of personal papers, as well as
many early records of Tuskegee Institute, are housed in the Manuscript
Division.

Tuskegee Institute was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881 under a
charter from the Alabama legislature for the purpose of training teachers
in Alabama. Tuskegee's program provided students with both academic and
vocational training. The students, under Washington's direction, built
their own buildings, produced their own food, and provided for most of
their own basic necessities. The Tuskegee faculty utilized each of these
activities to teach the students basic skills that they could share with
African American communities throughout the South.

At the turn of the century, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the most celebrated
black writer in America. Although Dunbar's reputation rested on his
mastery of dialect verse, he also demonstrated skill as a short story
writer, novelist, playwright, and librettist. In 1902 Booker T.
Washington commissioned Dunbar to write the school song for Tuskegee
Institute. Dunbar wrote his lyrics to the tune of "Fair Harvard."
Washington was not pleased with the "Tuskegee Song." He objected to
Dunbar's emphasis of "the industrial idea," and the exclusion of biblical
references. In this letter to Washington, Dunbar defends his artistic
sensibility.

Booker T. Washington was already a popular educator and speaker when he
gave this speech in Atlanta. The speech catapulted him into national
prominence. In the text he challenged both races to adjust to
post-emancipation realities. He stated that the races could work together
as one hand while socially remaining as separate as the fingers. At the
time, Washington's statement, offering reconciliation between the races,
pleased most Americans. Increasingly, however, as racial violence and
discrimination against blacks escalated at the turn of the century,
African American leaders began to believe that the speech represented not
a compromise but a capitulation.

Although W. E. B. DuBois would later publish his pointed challenge to Booker T. Washington's educational and political philosophy in his celebrated work, Souls of Black Folk (1903), at
the time of Washington's Atlanta speech, DuBois wrote this letter to express his congratulations.

In 1905 W. E. B. DuBois and black militant journalist William Monroe Trotter organized a meeting of black intellectuals and professionals in Niagara Falls, Canada, to demand full citizenship rights for African Americans: freedom of speech, an
"unfettered and unsubsidized" press, recognition of the principle of human brotherhood, the
right of the best training available for all people, and belief in the dignity of labor. The Niagara Movement later allied with an interracial group
to form the NAACP.

This composite of thirteen scenes pertaining to African American history
from 1619 to 1897, though not wholly accurate (for example, Attucks' first
name was Crispus, not Christopher), provides a brief historical overview
of the African American quest for full citizenship, particularly
participation in the Revolutionary War and the political arena. This
poster was published for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville
in 1897. A picture of the "Negro Exposition Building" is on the lower,
right-hand side of the poster.

Included in an award-winning exhibit at the Paris Exposition, this
photograph--one of 500--was part of the evidence collected under the
direction of W. E. B. DuBois to illustrate the condition, education, and
literature of African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, only
thirty-five years after the abolition of slavery. In his own description
of the exhibit, DuBois noted that by 1900 African Americans owned one
million acres of land and paid taxes on twelve million dollars worth of
property. In addition to photographs about black-owned businesses like
this one in Georgia, the exhibit included a number of images related to
successful black businesses elsewhere. The related display in the foyer
of the Library's John Adams Building features additional photographs of
black businesses assembled for the Paris Exposition.

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was a successful African American
businessman, librarian, and historian who worked for the Library of
Congress for fifty-two years beginning in 1871. In late 1899 the U.S.
commissioner general asked the Library of Congress to organize a display
of literature about African Americans for the Paris Exposition of 1900.
Murray was assigned to the task and worked swiftly to publish a
preliminary list. He also worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T.
Washington on organizing the full "Negro Exposition" in Paris.

Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors for Paris Exposition and Library of Congress.
Compiled by Daniel A. P. Murray. Washington: Library of Congress, 1900.
Pamphlet.Rare Book and Special Collections Division. (6-13)

Nannie Helen Burroughs, an educator, public speaker, and churchwoman, was
an ardent follower of Booker T. Washington's philosophy. She worked
tirelessly with the National Baptist Convention's Women's Auxiliary, first
as recording secretary and then as president, for over fifty years. She
established a school for girls in the District of Columbia in 1909 so as
to provide them with vocational and missionary training. She stated that
in addition to the three R's--reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, these young
women needed the three B's--the Bible, the bath, and the broom. Burroughs
often battled men within her denomination about the ownership and
administration of her school.

Fire insurance maps provide large-scale surveys of cities and most
major towns throughout the U. S. from the last quarter of the 19th century
until the middle of the 20th. They often show colleges and other academic
institutions, such as Hampton Normal Agricultural Institute, founded in
1868 in Hampton, Virginia. The number, size, shape, and construction of
buildings on the campus at the end of the 19th century are portrayed on
these two map sheets from January 1891.

Hampton University, as the institute was eventually renamed, and
several other historically black colleges and universities, were founded
to provide the education and skills that the ex-slave needed to become
self-reliant.

While Burroughs represented working class women, Mary Church Terrell was a
member of the African American elite. As a speaker, writer, and political
activist, she dedicated the lion's share of her talent to the pursuit of
full citizenship for both women and blacks. In 1898, Terrell, then
president of the National Association of Colored Women, gave this address
before the all-white National American Women's Suffrage Association. She
pointed out that for black women, access to education and employment were
as important as the vote. Terrell's autobiography was called A Colored
Woman in a White World (1940); some of her papers, including the
manuscript for her autobiography, as well as those of her husband, are in
the Library's Manuscript Division.

Botanist George
Washington Carver, a former slave, contributed immensely to the
understanding and development of the South's economic potential. Carver
shared the results of his useful agricultural experiments--especially the
peanut and the sweet potato--in pamphlets such as this one. In the
preface, Booker T. Washington writes:

"I have asked Professor
George W. Carver to make a careful study of the condition and needs of the
farmers in Macon and surrounding counties and to publish something that
will be of immediate and practical help to the farmers in this section.
It will pay, in my opinion, for every man interested in farming...to read
carefully the suggestions which Prof. Carver has made."

William J. Swaidner.
[Jack Johnson and James Jeffries at the World Championship Battle. Reno, Nevada, July 4, 1910].
Copyprint.Prints and Photographs Division. (6-25)

African American Jack Johnson, defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in 1908 in
the World Boxing Championship. This initiated the quest to find a "Great
White Hope" to defeat Johnson. James Jeffries, a leading white fighter,
came out of retirement to answer the challenge. Johnson won their fight
on July 4, 1910. News of Jeffries's defeat ignited numerous incidents of
white violence against blacks. However, black poet William Waring Cuney
captured the exuberant African American reaction in his poem, "My Lord,
What a Morning":

O my Lord
What a morning,
O my Lord,
What a feeling,
When Jack Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries'
Snow-white face
to the ceiling.

This home was designed in 1918 by an African American architect,
Vertner Woodson Tandy, for an African American cosmetics magnate, Madame
C. J. Walker, on the Hudson River north of New York City. When Madame
Walker was asked why she built such a palatial home, she replied that she
had not built it for herself but so that blacks could see what could be
accomplished with hard work and determination.

Villa Lewaro, the name of the estate, has significance for both its
architect and original owner. Tandy was New York's first licensed black
architect. This building was known as his best work. No one knows Mme.
Walker's exact worth, but she was considered to be the nation's first
African American woman millionaire.